If you're considering a move into the city from the suburbs, you'll need a place to put your car. Preferably, you'll need a place that's protected but won't cost a fortune. ParkingSpotter is a handy webapp that shows you available parking spaces to rent or buy in your neighborhood.

For those of you looking for a place to keep your vehicle if you've moved into a condo downtown or work in an office in the city without its own parking, the service has listings for major cities across the continental US, including New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, Denver, St. Louis, Boston, and more. The service depends on people and companies with available space to list them, so your mileage may vary depending on where you live.

Just type in the address you'd where you'd like to find nearby parking, and if any garages, parking companies, or even individual homeowners or landlords have listed spaces in the vicinity, you'll see them on a top-down Google Map. You can click any of them to see how much the space would cost you, and whether the space is available on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

If you find one you're interested in, just click "contact owner" and you'll be able to see the contact information provided or fill out a Web form to request more info. As someone who recently moved into an area where street parking can be expensive, ParkingSpotter helped me find garages in my area, even if few of them had available spots. The service also has special pages for airport parking, so people traveling out of town can find a bargain on a place to leave their car that's still near the airport while they're out of town. Photo by thienzieyung.